Laptop run off of AA batteries

The red multimeter is displaying amps and the yellow multimeter is displaying volts of the battery pack. Here I was using 11 AA batteries. Using between 10 and 12 cells worked because those were the voltages in which the inverter would not shutdown. The I got a total of at least 30 minutes of run time from one set of batteries. 8 of the cells were new 2500mah nimh cells and the others were 2000mah nimh. I tried to use 1000mah nicd cells, but the voltage would drop below 1 volt per cell. The larger capacity of nimh cells outweighed the higher “c” rate of the nicd cells in terms of over all output wattage of each cell. The highest power draw that I had seen was about 3.5 amps when playing Need for Speed. According to the computer, the power usage was between 15 watts and 30 watts. The inverter was a 400w black and decker model. The trick to the whole experiment was to make sure the laptop wasn’t charging its internal battery, which would of made the power draw to be around 50-60 watts, way too much for AA batteries. I tried this once with an old compaq laptop by directly wiring the cells to the power port. This required about 30 cells, which meant some of the cell’s voltages must have been near 0.Video Rating: 4 / 5

21 comments

@imback218 Volts and amps. You all ready told me 20 AA cells = 24v.
I would imagine any battery would be enough power for a 10 minute run time. You could pull up to about 10 amps from a 3ah nihm AA battery, so you would have about 240 watts of power, which should be plenty.

@imback218 That’s a random question. I think if you have a good charger and you need to be wireless, then go with some 3000mah nimh cells off ebay for cheap. If you don’t need wireless, then use a 12v wall adapter, like a laptop power supply.
20 AA doesn’t equal 12v, that’s more like 24v.

@THEtechknight I did that on a 2000 model year compaq 700m laptop. It lasted for about 30 minutes. If I use that inverter, I have a lesser chance of hurting the computer IMO. Plus, I don’t have a 12v connector for my laptop.

i woudlnt use an inverter. i would jsut use the proper amount of batteries to amount for the DC the laptop needs on its jack. Obviously, you can only do this on SOME laptops, and not the laptops have have the ID signal lead. (newer dell, HP, compaq)

Pretty cool, I did this once with a 70 watt power inverter and single 1ah rechargeable 12 volt nickle cad battery……surprisingly I got only about 5 min out of it (battery was 5 years old and deteriorating). It would be cool if laptops came with the option of user replaceable cells so people wouldn’t have to spend $100+ on a new battery. 5 stars